We Just Ran Out of Excuses for Incandescent Bulbs

I read an angry diatribe in the Boston Globe a few months back about the tyranny of forcing consumers to switch to compact flourescent lights. The story railed about how unfair it was to make Americans use more efficient lightbulbs that burn a fraction of the energy. How it was a real pain and unfair to those who wanted to continue to burn the hotter bulbs of yesterday.

The kicker was that it was an environmental threat–that disposing of the new longer lasting bulbs was like throwing away toxic mercury, and that it would poison our landfills…and again it was not fair to force us all to no longer buy the old kinds of bulbs.

Today Home Depot announced that they will recycle the new compact CFL bulbs at all 1,173 of their big box stores across the US. This broadens the scope of available options for recycling, which were once limited to Ikea and True Value hardware stores. Or people had to wait until Wal-mart had a special day to take in the bulbs. 75% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Home Depot store, said the story in today’s NY Times.